Sunday, December 14, 2014

"Kojin Karatani's Transcritique introduces a startlingly new dimension to Immanuel Kant's transcendental critique by using Kant to read Karl Marx and Marx to read Kant. In a direct challenge to standard academic approaches to both thinkers, Karatani's transcritical readings discover the ethical roots of socialism in Kant's Critique of Pure Reason and a Kantian critique of money in Marx's Capital.

Karatani reads Kant as a philosopher who sought to wrest metaphysics from the discredited realm of theoretical dogma in order to restore it to its proper place in the sphere of ethics and praxis. With this as his own critical model, he then presents a reading of Marx that attempts to liberate Marxism from longstanding Marxist and socialist presuppositions in order to locate a solid theoretical basis for a positive activism capable of gradually superseding the trinity of Capital-Nation-State."

"The interpretation of Hegel has been a focal point of philosophical controversy ever since the beginning of the twentieth century, both among Marxists and in the major European philosophical schools. Yet despite wide differences of emphasis most interpretations of Hegel share important similarities. They link his idea of Reason to the revolutionary and rationalist tradition which led to the French Revolution, and they interpret his dialectic as implying a latently atheist and even materialist world outlook.

Lucio Colletti directly challenges this picture of Hegel. He argues that Hegel was an essentially Christian philosopher, and that his dialectic was explicitly anti-materialist in both intention and effect. In contrast to earlier views, Colletti maintains that there is no contradiction between Hegel’s method and his system, once it is accepted that his thought is an exercise in Absolute Idealism stemming from a long Christian humanist tradition. He claims, on the contrary, that intellectual inconsistency is rather to be found in the works of Engels, Lenin, Lukás, Kojève and others, who have attempted to adapt Hegel to their own philosophical priorities.

Colletti places his argument in the context of a broad re-examination of the whole relationship between Marxism and the Enlightenment, giving novel emphasis to the relationship between Marxism and Kant. He concludes by re-asserting the importance in Marxism of empirical science against the claim of “infinite reason,” while at the same time showing how Marx did transform key ideas in Hegelian thought to construct a consistently materialist dialectic."

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

This volume contains a collection of Trotsky's writings on the Chinese revolution of 1925-27 and its aftermath.

This failed revolution ended with the deaths of tens of thousands of communist workers and the total destruction of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) as an organised mass movement of the working class. One cannot understand the fundamental problems in modern Chinese history, in particular the nature of the Maoist regime that was established in 1949, without understanding the lessons of 1925-27.

The perspective for the Chinese revolution was at the heart of Trotsky's struggle against the Stalinist bureaucracy. In this struggle, his theory of Permanent Revolution was put to a gigantic test—for the second time. With the support of the Soviet bureaucratic apparatus Stalin prevailed, leading to the betrayal of one of the most promising revolutionary opportunities since 1917. The defeat in China was a decisive blow to the Left Opposition. At the end of 1927, Trotsky was expelled from the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) and then from the USSR.

Friday, October 10, 2014

This book provides a wide-ranging and in-depth reappraisal of the
relation between Marx’s economic theory in Capital and Hegel’s Logic by
leading Marxian economists and philosophers from around the world. The
subjects dealt with include: systematic dialectics, the New Dialectics,
materialism vs. idealism, Marx’s ‘inversion’ of Hegel, Hegel’s Concept
logic (universality-particularity-singularity), Hegel’s Essence logic
(essence-appearance), Marx’s levels of abstraction of capital in general
and competition, and capital as Hegelian Subject.

The papers in
this volume were originally presented at the 22nd annual meeting of the
International Symposium on Marxian Theory at Mount Holyoke College in
August 2011. The twelve authors are divided between seven economists and
five philosophers, as is fitting for the interdisciplinary subject of
the relation between Marx’s economic theory and Hegel’s logic.

The contributors to this stimulating collection of thoughtful essays
examine the philosophical principles and logical structure underlying
Marx's economic theory in Capital.

The essays deal with many
methodological issues including: the meaning of dialectic logic, the
relation between Marx and Hegel, the historical specificity of Marx's
concepts, the emphasis on social forms, the commodity as the starting
point of Capital, the theory of money, the distinction between capital
in general and competition, and Marx's critique of bourgeois economics.

Wednesday, October 1, 2014

The Oxford Translation of Aristotle was originally published in twelve volumes between 1912 and 1954. The revised edition contains the substance of the original translation, slightly emended in light of recent scholarship; three of the original versions have been replaced by new translations; and a new and enlarged selection of fragments has been added. The aim of the translation remains the same: to make the surviving works of Aristotle readily accessible to English-speaking readers.

Monday, September 8, 2014

This book traces the link of major modern trends and ideas in political economy to economic doctrines 'of the past. With high scholarship warmed by humor, the reader is introduced to a host of earlier economic thinkers-Boisguillebert, Petty, Quesnay, Turgot, Smith, Ricardo, Saint-Simon, Fourier, Owen, and many others.

Their ideas are revealed against the background o( the age in which they. lived and wrote. The author Andrei Vladimirovich Anikin (Born Sep. 9, 1927 in Tomsk. Died August 29, 2001) was a professor at Moscow University.

Originally published in the Soviet Union in 1935, this was a popular
Stalinist textbook on Marxism and how it related to the problems of the
day. The book was used in Communist Party study classes for years.

Saturday, September 6, 2014

This book counters a range of assumptions commonly held about Marx's
views of nationalism and internationalism, not least by
twentieth-century marxists themselves. It shows that Marx did not
envisage the abolition of national communities or nation states; that
the politics of nationalism in Marx is not incompatible with a politics
of class; that Marx was repeatedly critical of a "utopian"
internationalism, and that the themes of nationalism and international
solidarity, far from being necessarily in opposition, can be seen in
many cases as mutually reinforcing. Nationalism then emerges in Marxist
theory as a form of political self-identification and mobilization that
can contribute to the broader project of social and political freedom.

Meikle emphasizes the roots of Marx's dialectical method in Aristotelian
essentialism and organicism. This is shown to constitute a challenge to
liberal scholars to rethink their methodological premises. Though many
liberals claim Aristotle as their intellectual forebear, they haue not
grasped the Aristotelian propensity for holistic analysis of social
phenomena—as Marx did. In order to reclaim Aristotle's legacy, liberals
must reformulate their economic and political ideas within a broader
context that takes account of historical, cultural and
socio‐psy‐chological factors.

This is the first comprehensive examination of Leon Trotsky's view on
revolutionary organizational principles, and the dynamic interplay of
democratic initiative and principled centralism. Mostly in his own
words, these writings are grounded in Trotsky's experience in Russia's
revolutionary movement, as a leader of the International Left Opposition
and Fourth International.

Lenin Reloaded is a rallying call by some of the world’s leading Marxist
intellectuals for renewed attention to the significance of Vladimir
Lenin. The volume’s editors explain that it was Lenin who made Karl
Marx’s thought explicitly political, who extended it beyond the confines
of Europe, who put it into practice. They contend that a focus on Lenin
is urgently needed now, when global capitalism appears to be the only
game in town, the liberal-democratic system seems to have been settled
on as the optimal political organization of society, and it has become
easier to imagine the end of the world than a modest change in the mode
of production. Lenin retooled Marx’s thought for specific historical
conditions in 1914, and Lenin Reloaded urges a reinvention of the
revolutionary project for the present. Such a project would be Leninist
in its commitment to action based on truth and its acceptance of the
consequences that follow from action.

These essays, some of which
are appearing in English for the first time, bring Lenin face-to-face
with the problems of today, including war, imperialism, the imperative
to build an intelligentsia of wage earners, the need to embrace the
achievements of bourgeois society and modernity, and the widespread
failure of social democracy. Lenin Reloaded demonstrates that truth and
partisanship are not mutually exclusive as is often suggested. Quite the
opposite—in the present, truth can be articulated only from a
thoroughly partisan position.

Introduction to Sociology distills decades of distinguished work in
sociology by one of this century's most influential thinkers in the
areas of social theory, philosophy, aesthetics, and music.

It
consists of a course of seventeen lectures given by Theodor W. Adorno in
May-July 1968, the last lecture series before his death in 1969.
Captured by tape recorder (which Adorno called "the fingerprint of the
living mind"), these lectures present a somewhat different, and more
accessible, Adorno from the one who composed the faultlessly articulated
and almost forbiddingly perfect prose of the works published in his
lifetime. Here we can follow Adorno's thought in the process of
formation (he spoke from brief notes), endowed with the spontaneity and
energy of the spoken word. The lectures form an ideal introduction to
Adorno's work, acclimatizing the reader to the greater density of
thought and language of his classic texts.

Delivered at the time
of the "positivist dispute" in sociology, Adorno defends the position of
the "Frankfurt School" against criticism from mainstream positivist
sociologists. He sets out a conception of sociology as a discipline
going beyond the compilation and interpretation of empirical facts, its
truth being inseparable from the essential structure of society itself.
Adorno sees sociology not as one academic discipline among others, but
as an over-arching discipline that impinges on all aspects of social
life.

Tracing the history of the discipline and insisting that
the historical context is constitutive of sociology itself, Adorno
addresses a wide range of topics, including: the purpose of studying
sociology; the relation of sociology and politics; the influence of
Saint-Simon, Comte, Durkheim, Weber, Marx, and Freud; the contributions
of ethnology and anthropology; the relationship of method to subject
matter; the problems of quantitative analysis; the fetishization of
science; and the separation of sociology and social philosophy.

What has philosophy to do with the poor? If, as has often been supposed,
the poor have no time for philosophy, then why have philosophers always
made time for them? Why is the history of philosophy—from Plato to Karl
Marx to Jean-Paul Sartre to Pierre Bourdieu—the history of so many
figures of the poor: plebes, men of iron, the demos, artisans, common
people, proletarians, the masses? Why have philosophers made the
shoemaker, in particular, a remarkably ubiquitous presence in this
history? Does philosophy itself depend on this thinking about the poor?
If so, can it ever refrain from thinking for them?Jacques Ranci?re’s The
Philosopher and His Poor meditates on these questions in close readings
of major texts of Western thought in which the poor have played a
leading role—sometimes as the objects of philosophical analysis,
sometimes as illustrations of philosophical argument. Published in
France in 1983 and made available here for the first time in English,
this consummate study assesses the consequences for Marx, Sartre, and
Bourdieu of Plato’s admonition that workers should do “nothing else”
than their own work. It offers innovative readings of these thinkers’
struggles to elaborate a philosophy of the poor. Presenting a left
critique of Bourdieu, the terms of which are largely unknown to an
English-language readership, The Philosopher and His Poor remains
remarkably timely twenty years after its initial publication.

Louis Althusser was probably one of the most complex - and the most
controversial - of the "maitres de penser" to emerge from the turbulent
Parisian intellectual scene of the 1960s. During a long career,
Althusser achieved wide fame, notoriety and, finally, effacement. Yet
his work remains an important element in contemporary philosophy and
cultural critique. This volume, timed to coincide with the
English-language publication of Althusser's autobiography, "The Future
Lasts a Long Time", assesses the importance and influence of
"Althusserianism", both in relation to, and beyond, the controversies of
his political career and the events of his personal biography. One of
the principal aims of the book is to situate Althusser and his texts
within the wider histories and cultures to which they belong, drawing on
contributors from a wide range of backgrounds and geographical
locations. Thus E.J. Hobsbawm contextualizes Althusser's Marxism;
Pierre Villar assesses Althusserian historiography; Paul Ricoeur probes
Althusser's theory of ideology; Axel Honneth articulates his relation to
the principal rival schools of Marxism in the 1960s and 1970s; Peter
Dews examines his relations to the structuralist school; David Macey
casts a sceptical eye over his alliance with Lacan; Francis Mulhern
explores the diversity of Anglophone "Althusserianism"; and Gregory
Elliott responds to Althusser's analysis of his own case history. The
book concludes with a bibliography of Althusser's analysis of his own
case history.

This
work both argues for, and demonstrates, a new turn to dialectic. Marx's
"Capital" was clearly influenced by Hegel's dialectical figures - here,
case by case, the significance of these is clarified.

Thursday, September 4, 2014

First published in Portuguese in 1968, Pedagogy of the Oppressed was translated and published in English in 1970. The methodology of the late Paulo Freire has helped to empower countless impoverished and illiterate people throughout the world. Freire's work has taken on especial urgency in the United States and Western Europe, where the creation of a permanent underclass among the underprivileged and minorities in cities and urban centers is increasingly accepted as the norm. With a substantive new introduction on Freire's life and the remarkable impact of this book by writer and Freire confidant and authority Donaldo Macedo, this anniversary edition of Pedagogy of the Oppressed will inspire a new generation of educators, students, and general readers for years to come.

In
"23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism", one of today's most
iconoclastic thinkers destroys the biggest myths about the world we live
in. It may have its flaws, but there's no real alternative to
free-market capitalism - ultimately it's making us all more prosperous.
The West is more efficient and financially savvy than the developing
world. And technology is the way forward for everyone. Right? Wrong.
This book will turn every piece of received economic wisdom you've heard
on its head. It reveals the truth behind what 'they' tell you and shows
how the system really works, including: There's no such thing as a
'free' market; Globalization isn't making the world richer; We don't
live in a digital world - the washing machine has changed lives more
than the internet; Poor countries are more entrepreneurial than rich
ones; and, Higher paid managers don't produce better results. This
galvanizing, fact-packed book about money, equality, freedom and greed
proves that the free market isn't just bad for people - it's an
inefficient way of running economies too. Here Chang lays out the
alternatives, and shows there's a better way.

During the Cold War years, mainstream commentators were quick to dismiss
the idea that the United States was an imperialist power. Even when
U.S. interventions led to the overthrow of popular governments, as in
Iran, Guatemala, or the Congo, or wholesale war, as in Vietnam, this
fiction remained intact. During the 1990s and especially since September
11, 2001, however, it has crumbled. Today, the need for American empire
is openly proclaimed and defended by mainstream analysts and
commentators.

John Bellamy Foster’s Naked Imperialism examines
this important transformation in U.S. global policy and ideology,
showing the political and economic roots of the new militarism and its
consequences both in the global and local context. Foster shows how
U.S.-led global capitalism is preparing the way for a new age of
barbarism and demonstrates the necessity for resistance and solidarity
on a global scale.

Wednesday, September 3, 2014

Why do people work for other people? This seemingly naïve question is at
the heart of Lordon's argument. To complement Marx's partial answers,
especially in the face of the disconcerting spectacle of the engaged,
enthusiastic employee, Lordon brings to bear a "Spinozist anthropology"
that reveals the fundamental role of affects and passions in the
employment relationship, reconceptualizing capitalist exploitation as
the capture and remolding of desire. A thoroughly materialist reading of
Spinoza's Ethics allows Lordon to debunk all notions of individual
autonomy and self-determination while simultaneously saving the ideas of
political freedom and liberation from capitalist exploitation. Willing
Slaves of Capital is a bold proposal to rethink capitalism and its
transcendence on the basis of the contemporary experience of work.

Tuesday, September 2, 2014

Once of central importance to left historians and activists alike, the
concept of the bourgeois revolution” has recently come in for sustained
criticism from both Marxists and conservatives. In this comprehensive
rejoinder, Neil Davidson seeks to answer the question, How revolutionary
were the bourgeois revolutions? by systematically examining the
approach taken by a wide range of thinkers to explain their causes,
outcomes, and content across the historical period from the
sixteenth-century Reformation to twentieth-century decolonization.
Through far-reaching research and comprehensive analysis, Davidson
demonstrates that there is much at stakefar from being a stale issue
for the history books, understanding these struggles of the past can
offer insightful lessons for today’s radicals.

Breathing new life into the achievements of Karl Marx, this accessible and jargon-free introduction is a timely reminder of his undiminished influence. Andrew Collier's engaging text not only introduces the reader to Marx the revolutionary, but also redefines him as one of the first truly democratic thinkers. In a concise yet searching manner, Collier covers all the elements of marxist thought, from the early writings to such major texts as 'Capital' and the key themes of labour and society. Punctuating his study with a wide range of examples, from Aristotelian thought to Thatcherite policy, he explores the traditional notion of Marx the activist, while probing the apparent inconsistencies in his work and reclaiming his place as a philosopher and political theorist. Concluding with a thought-provoking assessment of Marx's pervasive influence on the political landscape of the twenty-first century. Collier's study highlights our own global inequalities and will be warmly welcomed by students, scholars and activists from a variety of backgrounds.

Terry Eagleton’s witty and polemical Reason, Faith, and Revolution is
bound to cause a stir among scientists, theologians, people of faith and
people of no faith, as well as general readers eager to understand the
God Debate. On the one hand, Eagleton demolishes what he calls the
“superstitious” view of God held by most atheists and agnostics and
offers in its place a revolutionary account of the Christian Gospel. On
the other hand, he launches a stinging assault on the betrayal of this
revolution by institutional Christianity.There is little joy here, then,
either for the anti-God brigade—Richard Dawkins and Christopher
Hitchens in particular—nor for many conventional believers. Instead,
Eagleton offers his own vibrant account of religion and politics in a
book that ranges from the Holy Spirit to the recent history of the
Middle East, from Thomas Aquinas to the Twin Towers.

In The Frankfurt School on Religion, Mendieta has brought together a
selection of readings and essays which will make available the
significant and much-needed, contribution of the thinkers of the
Frankfurt School on the religion.

On Christian Belief offers a defence of realism in the philosophy of
religion. It argues that religious belief - with particular reference to
Christian belief - unlike any other kind of belief, is cognitive;
making claims about what is real, and open to rational discussion
between believers and non-believers. The author begins by providing a
critique of several views which either try to describe a faith without
cognitive context, or to justify believing on non-cognitive grounds. He
then discusses what sense can be made of the phenomenon of religious
conversion by realists and non-realists. After a chapter on knowledge in
general, he defends the idea that religious knowledge is very like
other knowledge, in being based on reliable testimony, sifted by reason
and tested by experience. The logical status of the content of
religious belief is then discussed, with reference to Christianity.

"What matters is not so much that Žižek is endorsing a demythologized, disenchanted Christianity without transcendence, as that he is offering in the end (despite what he sometimes claims) a heterodox version of Christian belief."--John Milbank"To put it even more bluntly, my claim is that it is Milbank who is effectively guilty of heterodoxy, ultimately of a regression to paganism: in my atheism, I am more Christian than Milbank."--Slavoj ŽižekIn this corner, philosopher Slavoj Žižek, a militant atheist who represents the critical-materialist stance against religion's illusions; in the other corner, "Radical Orthodox" theologian John Milbank, an influential and provocative thinker who argues that theology is the only foundation upon which knowledge, politics, and ethics can stand. In The Monstrosity of Christ, Žižek and Milbank go head to head for three rounds, employing an impressive arsenal of moves to advance their positions and press their respective advantages. By the closing bell, they have not only proven themselves worthy adversaries, they have shown that faith and reason are not simply and intractably opposed. Žižek has long been interested in the emancipatory potential offered by Christian theology. And Milbank, seeing global capitalism as the new century's greatest ethical challenge, has pushed his own ontology in more political and materialist directions. Their debate in The Monstrosity of Christ concerns the future of religion, secularity, and political hope in light of a monsterful event--God becoming human. For the first time since Žižek's turn toward theology, we have a true debate between an atheist and a theologian about the very meaning of theology, Christ, the Church, the Holy Ghost, Universality, and the foundations of logic. The result goes far beyond the popularized atheist/theist point/counterpoint of recent books by Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and others. Žižek begins, and Milbank answers, countering dialectics with "paradox." The debate centers on the nature of and relation between paradox and parallax, between analogy and dialectics, between transcendent glory and liberation. Slavoj Žižek is a philosopher and cultural critic. He has published over thirty books, including Looking Awry, The Puppet and the Dwarf, and The Parallax View (these three published by the MIT Press). John Milbank is an influential Christian theologian and the author of Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason and other books. Creston Davis, who conceived of this encounter, studied under both Žižek and Milbank.

This volume explores the common ground between Marxism and Christianity.
It argues that Marxism shares in good measure both the content and
functions of Christianity and does so because it inherits it from
Christianity. It details the religious attitudes and modes of belief
that appear in Marxism as it developed historically from the
philosophies of Hegel and Feuerbach, and as it has been carried on by
its latter-day interpreters from Rosa Luxemberg and Trotsky to Kautsky
and Lukacs. It sets out to show that Marxism, no less than Christianity,
is subject to the historical relativity that affects all ideologies.
This new edition has been updated to take account of the collapse of
Communism in the former Eastern bloc and whether Marxism, in particular,
is still relevant to those who seek a changed social order today.

“A classic and impassioned account of the first revolution in the Third World.

This powerful, intensely dramatic book is the definitive account of the Haitian Revolution of 1794-1803, a revolution that began in the wake of the Bastille but became the model for the Third World liberation movements from Africa to Cuba. It is the story of the French colony of San Domingo, a place where the brutality of master toward slave was commonplace and ingeniously refined. And it is the story of a barely literate slave named Toussaint L’Ouverture, who led the black people of San Domingo in a successful struggle against successive invasions by overwhelming French, Spanish, and English forces and in the process helped form the first independent nation in the Caribbean.”

Walter Benjamin's magnum opus was a book he did not live to write. In
The Dialectics of Seeing, Susan Buck-Morss offers an inventive
reconstruction of the Passagen Werk, or Arcades Project, as it might
have taken form.Working with Benjamin's vast files of citations and
commentary which contain a myriad of historical details from the dawn of
consumer culture, Buck-Morss makes visible the conceptual structure
that gives these fragments philosophical coherence. She uses images
throughout the book to demonstrate that Benjamin took the debris of mass
culture seriously as the source of philosophical truth.The Paris
Arcades that so fascinated Benjamin (as they did the Surrealists whose
"materialist metaphysics" he admired) were the prototype, the 19th
century "ur-form" of the modern shopping mall. Benjamin's dialectics of
seeing demonstrate how to read these consumer dream houses and so many
other material objects of the time - from air balloons to women's
fashions, from Baudelaire's poetry to Grandville's cartoons - as
anticipations of social utopia and, simultaneously, as clues for a
radical political critique.Buck-Morss plots Benjamin's intellectual
orientation on axes running east and west, north and south - Moscow
Paris, Berlin-Naples - and shows how such thinking in coordinates can
explain his understanding of "dialectics at a standstill." She argues
for the continuing relevance of Benjamin's insights but then allows a
set of "afterimages" to have the last word.Susan Buck-Morss is Professor
of Political Philosophy and Social Theory at Cornell University. The
Dialectics of Seeing is included in the series Studies in Contemporary
German Social Thought, edited by Thomas McCarthy.

Walter Benjamin's most famous and influential essay remains The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Walter Benjamin and the Work of Art is the first book to provide a broad and dedicated analysis of this canonical work and its effect upon core contemporary concerns in the visual arts, aesthetics and the history of philosophy.

The book is structured around three distinct areas: the extension of Benjamin's work; the question of historical connection; the importance of the essay in the development of criticism of both the visual arts and literature. Contributors to the volume include major Benjamin commentators, whose work has very much defined the reception of the essay, and leading philosophers, historians and aesthetician, whose approaches open up new areas of interest and relevance

This book offers an original and challenging study of Marx's contact with the visual arts, aesthetic theories, and art policies in nineteenth-century Europe. It differs from previous discussions of Marxist aesthetic theory in looking at Marx's views from an art-historical rather than from a literary perspective, and in placing those views in the context of the art practices, theories, and policies of Marx's own time. Dr Rose begins her work by discussing Marx's planned treatise on Romantic art of 1842 against the background of the philosophical debates, cultural policies, and art practices of the 1840s, and looks in particular at the patronage given to the group of German artists known as the 'Nazarenes' in those years, who are discussed in relation to both the English Pre-Raphaelites, popular in the London known to Marx, and to the Russian Social Realists of the 1860s. The author goes on to consider claims of twentieth-century Marxist art theories and practices to have represented Marx's own views on art. The book the conflicting claims made on Marx's views by the Soviet avant-garde Constructivists of the 1920s and of the Socialist Realists who followed them are considered, and are related back to the aesthetic theories and practices discussed in the earlier chapters.

Art In Its Time takes a close look at the way in which art has
become integral to the everyday 'ordinary' life of modern society. It
explores the prevalent notion of art as transcending its historical
moment, and argues that art cannot be separated from the everyday as it
often provides material to represent social struggles and class, to
explore sexuality, and to think about modern industry and our economic
relationships.

Music and Marx considers Marx's relevance to current issues in musical
scholarship from perspectives that range across disciplinary and
political vantage points. Well-known contributors analyze the numerous
ways in which Marxist thought enters into music discourse. Exploring
everything from Marxism in hip-hop to feudal properties of Hindustani
music to revolutionary music of Central America, the essays in this book
find surprising, paradigm-shifting revelations. This book will
revolutionize the way music production and consumption is viewed.

A decade after Francis Fukuyama announced the "End of History,"
anti-capitalist demonstrators at Seattle and elsewhere have helped
reinvigorate the Left with the reply "another world is possible." More
than anyone else it was Marx who showed that slogans such as this were
no utopian fantasies, and that capitalism was just as much a historical
mode of production, no more natural and certainly no less contradictory,
than were the feudal and slave modes which proceeded it. This book
should be read by historians, students of cultural, social and political
theory and anti-capitalist activists.

Historical Materialism and Social Evolution brings together a collection
of essays which investigate the relationship between Marxist thought
and Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. Each of the
contributors emphasize the idea that the distinctive character of
progressive social thought is derived from creative ideas drawn from the
study of natural evolutionary processes.

Poulantzas’s
book is the first major Marxist study of German and Italian fascism to
appear since the Second World War. It carefully distinguishes between
fascism as a mass movement before the seizure of power and fascism as an
entrenched machinery of dictatorship. It compares the distinct class
components of the counter-revolutionary blocs mobilzed by fascism in
Germany and Italy; analyses the changing relations between the petty
bourgeoisie and big capital in the evolution of fascism; discusses the
structures of the fascist state itself, as an emergency regime for the
defense of capital; and provides a sustained and documented criticism of
official Comintern attitudes and policies towards fascism in the
fateful years after the Versailles settlement. Fascism and Dictatorship
represents a challenging synthesis of factual evidence and conceptual
analysis that has been rare in Marxist political theory to date.

First-ever collection of the key writings of one of the most influential
political theorists of the postwar epoch. Nicos Poulantzas was one of
the leading Marxist theorists of the twentieth century, developing
seminal analyses of the state and social classes during the crisis of
monopoly capitalism. This volume brings together a wide selection of
Poulantzas’ key writings in legal philosophy and political sociology,
including some important pieces translated here for the first time.
Texts include his early analyses of law, his studies of hegemony,
authoritarianism, and social classes, and his debate on the state with
Ralph Miliband and Ernesto Laclau. An essential introduction for the
scholar and the student to a body of work that continues to reverberate
across the social sciences.

A cartoon book about Marx? Are you sure it's Karl, not Groucho? How can
you summarize the work of Karl Marx in cartoons? It took Rius to do it.
He's put it all in: the origins of Marxist philosophy, history,
economics; of capital, labor, the class struggle, socialism. And there's
a biography of "Charlie" Marx besides.

Like the companion volumes in the series, Marx for Beginners is accurate, understandable, and very, very funny.

Intense debates in recent decades have provoked major new directions in Marxist theory. Earlier reductionist notions of knowledge, dialectics, contradiction, class, and capitalism have been challenged and profoundly transformed. Economic determinism has given way to new kinds of philosophic, social, and economic analysis such as the one Resnick and Wolff here develop around overdeterminism. Showing that Lenin, Lukacs, Gramsci, Mao, and Althusser contributed concepts of knowledge, class, and society that can radically alter traditional dialectical materialism, the authors demonstrate how this alteration also transforms Marxist economic theory. The dramatic result is a new Marxian theory, a new analysis of class, enterprise, and state.

"Mike Wayne’s introduction is one of the highlights of the book. Wayne summarises many of the key Marxist debates but takes positions. He argues against the pessimism of even soft versions of postmodernism and challenges the once fashionable post-structuralists who argued that texts write themselves, that cultural products are shaped unconsciously by institutions, history, subconscious desires and so on. As he says, ‘While the dominant version of authorship had rightly been taken to task, we cannot do without some sense of agency, collective and individual… There is no reason to suppose that authors of cultural texts are any less able to consciously shape meaning than academics.’"

This 248-page book uses text and comics to explain in simple terms what capitalism is, how it works, why it’s irredeemable, and what we can do to end it. Oppression, ecocide, inequality, and exploitation can’t be voted away or escaped. We can’t get rid of them through consumer or lifestyle choices. If you really want to end the atrocities, you need to join the worldwide fight against capitalism!

Part 1 of the book explains the economic mechanisms of capitalism, and why the growth imperative is built into it. Part 2 explains the kind of organizations we need to build and support, in order to have a fighting chance against this ruthless global system.

Throughout, cartoons make the points even more clear (and might make you laugh as well). (Please note: the cartoons in the print version are in black and white).

"Focusing on Marxist thought in particular, Introducing Marxism gives an overview of the historical development of Marxism, also using the words and ideas of important thinkers. To establish the importance of Marx, the book begins with the publication of one his most well-known works – The Communist Manifesto, stating that “the Manifesto left an indelible mark on human progress and still today forms the basis for a system of political beliefs that motivates millions.” (4) Following a brief account of Marx’s life, which highlights his early passion for philosophy, his life as a political agitator, and the importance of his friendship with Friedrich Engels, Introducing Marxism looks at Marx’s philosophical, economic, and political theories, including dialectical materialism, surplus value, and class struggle."

In August 1953, the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency orchestrated the
swift overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected leader and installed
Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi in his place. Over the next twenty-six years,
the United States backed the unpopular, authoritarian shah and his
secret police; in exchange, it reaped a share of Iran’s oil wealth and
became a key player in this volatile region.

The blowback was
almost inevitable, as this new and revealing history of the coup and its
consequences shows. When the 1979 Iranian Revolution deposed the shah
and replaced his puppet government with a radical Islamic republic under
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the shift reverberated throughout the
Middle East and the world, casting a long, dark shadow over U.S.-Iran
relations that extends to the present day.

In this authoritative
new history of the coup and its aftermath, noted Iran scholar Ervand
Abrahamian uncovers little-known documents that challenge conventional
interpretations and also sheds new light on how the American role in the
coup influenced U.S.-Iranian relations, both past and present. Drawing
from the hitherto closed archives of British Petroleum, the Foreign
Office, and the U.S. State Department, as well as from Iranian memoirs
and published interviews, Abrahamian’s riveting account of this key
historical event will change America’s understanding of a crucial
turning point in modern U.S.-Iranian relations.

Trotsky was a hero to some, a ruthless demon to others. To Stalin, he was such a threat that he warranted murder by pickax. This polarizing figure set up a world conflict that lasted through the twentieth century, and in Trotsky: A Graphic Biography, the renowned comic artist Rick Geary uses his distinct style to depict the stark reality of the man and his times. Trotsky’s life becomes a guide to the creation of the Soviet Union, the horrors of World War I, and the establishment of international communism as he, Lenin, and their fellow Bolsheviks rise from persecution and a life underground to the height of political power. Ranging from his boyhood in the Ukraine to his fallout with Stalin and his moonlight romance with Frida Kahlo, Trotsky is a stunning look at one of the twentieth century’s most important thinkers and the far-reaching political trends that he launched.